elemental
by QuietLittleVoices
Summary: You fall in love like (with) a forest fire. ((Dean/Cas, 2nd person Dean POV, set at some point in s9 or is slightly canon divergent. No real spoilers though.))


**A/N: **I don't own anything.

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><p>You fall in love like an earthquake. Maybe 'with an earthquake' would be more accurate. Or something as vague as 'natural disaster', something that encompasses the notion of the lights shaking lose in your house and the windows exploding outwards and maybe even a phoenix rising from the ashes.<p>

A forest fire, you decide. You fall in love like (with) a forest fire. Elemental, destructive, all-consuming. And it starts slow, that's the important part. First, dried grass catches. Something already prone and likely to go off at the lightest spark. It could've burned itself out, but it didn't, and the fire reached the trees. Those went up slower but when they did the fire was uncontrollable, climbing up into the sky and going farther and farther out into the world.

And you know that it shouldn't have happened – you should have kept closer watch of yourself, made sure the fire didn't lick up your spine – but that's why it did. It was inevitable, really, because more than anything it _wasn't supposed to happen_. It wasn't in the books, it wasn't in 'God's plan', and it sure as hell wasn't in _your _plan, either. But he'd said once that you were making it up as you went, and that's a better explanation than anything you could come up with.

It was made up. The fire wasn't real, and the earthquake was just the subtle trembling of your hands, your ribs, your bones when he was near – the vibrations in you from the echoes of your fractured pieces that you knew instinctively would line up with his. But you know that you could never test that knowledge, that you would have to just take it on faith, like you took every other goddamn thing about him on faith, and that would have to be good enough.

Because you didn't get good things. You would never be able to touch him, to hold him, to see if you lined up just right, because you know that if you did your fire would catch and he'd burn up. It would dance along his skin and char his flesh instead of settling in his palms and resting on the insides of his pockets and in the pit of his stomach like a warm, reassuring weight. You knew that the fire that sat in you was destructive, that it took everything in its path and left nothing but you behind, and it wasn't worth the risk. You'd rather have him as a friend, nothing more, than not have him at all. You think that if you didn't have him, well… you're not sure what you'd do. You do know that you don't want to think about it; you don't want to know how you'd deal with that loss. You know that you'd never handle it well.

Because he might be the one who lit the forest fire at the base of your spine, might be the one who started the earthquake in your bones, but he's stars and galaxies and moons and planets. He's the infinite darkness you've fallen into, he's the points of light and life on your horizons, he's the only thing that's keeping you from flying apart. He's the sun shining on your skin, but he's gotten too close, and the sun doesn't love the things it shines on as much as they love it, as much as you love him.

Loving him is like tumbling through space without a helmet, like a vacuum pressing you in on yourself further and further and further until you can't breathe, until he's everywhere, until he's everything. And then you force yourself to stay. You force yourself to keep him out, because you can't let him in, because he'll break your heart or you'll break his and really being collapsed in on yourself is less painful than losing him, so you'll stay. You'll stay until the fire's eaten away the last of you and the universe has disappeared if it means that you'll never have to say goodbye to him.

Goodbye is all you've ever said to him and to anyone else you've let this close, and all you want is to be able to say hello, over and over until it's just the two of you bathed in moonlight with the galaxies reflecting off his skin and a fire burning in you. And then you'd like to be able to say 'hello' again and never let go, light your flame on his spine and let it catch, knowing that he'll be safe from harm.

You think that maybe it _was_ God's plan to make you feel this way, like a self-deprecating force of nature in love with the stars, because it feels right when he looks at you with eyes filled to the brim with stardust. Sometimes you let yourself pretend that this was the plan all along, because if it was then it might have a happy ending, or at least a less shitty one, but good things don't happen and he might be a fallen star but you can't burden him with all that you are and so you keep your distance. You let him find out who he is as a human on his own terms, try to stay out of his way unless he needs you, and you let the earthquake that he set off shake you apart.


End file.
